Xamarin.Forms 2.5.0

Posts

We're evaluating 2017 (we're still developing in 2015) but I was taken aback how flaky things were in 2017 15.5.0, I could only get a basic blank Forms project to compile, the masterdetail template .NETStandard app can't compile. I wouldn't like going into it picking up Xamarin....mind you was no different 30 months ago for me, just a different set of problems (iOS integration was shocking back then).

Been working all day here on 15.5.1, no issues, it is getting noticeably faster. I tried 2.5.0 but that gave all sorts of weird errors, it was clearly rushed through the channels for Connect.

I do used to have an enterprise license and suddenly VS2017 Community Edition reminds me of that by saying that Xamarin Enterprise is not valid anymore every single time I start VS. Could not get the (new for me) remote simulator working either.

Some things working fine, some things slowly getting better, some things so crap you can't understand they could get it through QA.

I tried and went live in my app. I dont see huge difference but slight improvements. İt said that improvement can be felt better on. Old Devices but i cant confirm as i dont have one. You should really test it to avoid layout problems.

Any idea how we use it? it doesn't seem to work automatically as i have set the device to show the app right to left but no changes in the layouts.

It's been merged into the master branch, but that doesn't mean it's in this current release. You should probably expect it to be in the next few releases, you'll know when it's out because it'll be in the release notes.

@DavidOrtinau any idea when will this be released? I'm not seeing it even in SR3..

Any idea how we use it? it doesn't seem to work automatically as i have set the device to show the app right to left but no changes in the layouts.

It's been merged into the master branch, but that doesn't mean it's in this current release. You should probably expect it to be in the next few releases, you'll know when it's out because it'll be in the release notes.

@DavidOrtinau any idea when will this be released? I'm not seeing it even in SR3..

I currently have 4 bugs in status CONFIRMED (and 7 ASSIGNED). The oldest one has been created on 2016-02-09, set to CONFIRMED on 2016-12-21 and was never touched since.
Sorry Matthias, but that status doesn't mean anything.

Putting in on GitHub worked out pretty good, already fixed and merged with 1441
Thank you @EZHart
Now could someone please see to it that this is released in the next SR? @DavidOrtinau

According to @MichaelRumpler and @AmirImam it seems as 2.5 don't work wit VS 2017.... really...?May we have some management attention here... please...?
It can't be, that the newest "stable" XF version is not usable with the newest VS version (ahhh... sorry, it seems to be...)
We plan to update to VS2017 and also XF 2.5 in the near time (and... I think, we are not alone...)

> @FredyWenger said:
> According to @MichaelRumpler and @AmirImam it seems as 2.5 don't work wit VS 2017.... really...?
> May we have some management attention here... please...?
> It can't be, that the newest "stable" XF version is not usable with the newest VS version (ahhh... sorry, it seems to be...)
> We plan to update to VS2017 and also XF 2.5 in the near time (and... I think, we are not alone...)

it works for me. I am using it in my 2 projects already on VS2017 and 2.5. Both are having latest stable update. it is supper annoying and frustrating saying this but xamarin assume it is user specific problem if works for some and doesnt work for others. And in such cases xamarin doesnt give any support about it

It works fine if you create a brand new project... However I have a project I cannot update as it fails on Android on trying to update the support libraries and I havn't found a way to fix this... Others have mentioned this too... Also this problem seems to be a VS 2017 issue as I get the same errors trying to update a project from Forms 2.3 to 2.4...

@FredyWenger said:
According to @MichaelRumpler and @AmirImam it seems as 2.5 don't work wit VS 2017.... really...?May we have some management attention here... please...?
It can't be, that the newest "stable" XF version is not usable with the newest VS version (ahhh... sorry, it seems to be...)
We plan to update to VS2017 and also XF 2.5 in the near time (and... I think, we are not alone...)

I had to roll back to 15.4.5 after updating to 15.5 because my build scripts (cake) suddenly stopped working for the Android release. Gonna stay on 15.4.5 until there is a "must-have" feature...

At some point, I had to build my iOS project from a fresh template and pull everything in, then it worked. And Android is always very frustrating, especially the Support Libraries...

Unbelievable...
We (all developers) always (and still!) have to fear every update in the "Xamarin universe" (Forms and also VS) and invest day's for try-and-error's with the update and the only help comes from other users...
And... this for years now (nothing change... )

@FredyWenger said:
Unbelievable...
We (all developers) always (and still!) have to fear every update in the "Xamarin universe" (Forms and also VS) and invest day's for try-and-error's with the update and the only help comes from other users...
And... this for years now (nothing change... )

I can except that there are bugs and problems. even google has buggy updates often but there are some serious bugs and they are still with "confirmed" status in bugzilla. This is more frustrating.

Just a quick note... I know some of you cannot use anything but "Stable" releases, but for the rest... Have you thought about just building your own nuget package from the source? The reason I dont complain about releases now is I have stopped using them quite awhile ago. I now control what code is put in and what is not to our releases. Its just a thought but it might save alot of you headaches.

@BradChase.2654 said:
I now control what code is put in and what is not to our releases.

Can you give everyone some context of your work environment? What does "our" consist of? 2 freelancers... 5 teams of 10 people each spread across 3 states? Are we talking about a couple college kids making games in their dorm room or a small software shop for 2 products or an enterprise grade development company?

No we build aviation software with a medium sized team. Without going into numbers, we have all the usual, QA team, Marketing team, Sales team, the whole lot. Multiple offices spanning the world. This isnt a popup shop in some kid's mom's basement.

is that RTL only important for languages like Arabic, Hebrew or any other functionality?

its not just the matter of being funny or comfortable (as users in these languages are used to this problem)
there are also some issues like the navigation bar and page titles which if not handled properly the Design will be odd and its not something the App creator would like ...

@ShawnCastrianni said:
Or will upgrading XF automatically upgrade Android support libraries for me?

This is very hit or miss at the moment.. for some people upgrading works and for others you get Android support library errors after upgrading XF.. nobody has worked out what the problem is yet.... so as long as you can roll back, give it a go...

@ShawnCastrianni the 2.5.0 release notes include some history and direction on a compatible combination of Support Libs, Android framework, Google Play Services, Firebase, and Xamarin.Forms. Could be helpful to you.

Bit of feedback on CompressionLayout. I'm seeing about 10-20% improvement on performance on my Moto G phone, which is great.

A good tip on a way to implement it is to use a StaticResource like so:

<x:Boolean x:Key="CompressionLayoutOn">True</x:Boolean>

and then use it in your xaml like:

CompressedLayout.IsHeadless="{StaticResource CompressionLayoutOn}"

and then you can easily switch it on and off.

It does say in the documentation if its incorrectly used it will "Silently fail" would it be possible to get a compiler warning if it has been used in an incorrect way. Not sure if its possible but would be useful

For example are the following layouts candidates to use LayoutCompression on?

<Grid Margin="5"/>

<Grid IsVisible="{Binding myViewModelProperty}"/>

<ContentView/>

examples above which I can't work out from the documentation whether I should apply LayoutCompression to them?

Two points worth mentioning:

It's probably also worth mentioning that ScrollView is NEVER a candidate for LayoutCompression

You can also use LayoutCompression in code like: CompressedLayout.SetIsHeadless(this, (bool)Application.Current.Resources["CompressionLayoutOn"]); or CompressedLayout.SetIsHeadless(this, true); if you don't use the StaticResource switch

I wonder why bug #60589 was ignored on bugzilla for the last two months. It was found early during the pre release phase, but 2.5.0 was still released with it.
I filed it on GitHub too. Hopefully it will raise more attention there (or here).

@AmirImam said:
> @MichaelRumpler said:
> I cannot install any stable XF 2.5.0.* version in my Android project.
> I already uninstalled all Xamarin.Android.* packages, Xamarin.Forms and all dependent packages, restarted VS2017 15.5.1 but the error is still there.

Did you find any solution?
Because I still have the same issue

Yes, I used VS2015 to upgrade to 2.5.
It did not work in VS2017 15.5.1 and also failed with the same error in 15.6.0 Preview 1.1.

I was able to update after hitting this issue. What I did was update the package for each of my projects one by one. I.e. I updated PCL, UWP and iOS one at a time, then finished with Android. I have no idea how and why that worked but it did.

I can't install version 2.5.0.122203.I get errors that undetected packages Xamarin.Android.Support.v7... 25.4.0.2. But I use Xamarin.Android.Support... 26.1.0.1 and target Android version 8.0.Any help.

@ZenDroid said:
I can't install version 2.5.0.122203.I get errors that undetected packages Xamarin.Android.Support.v7... 25.4.0.2. But I use Xamarin.Android.Support... 26.1.0.1 and target Android version 8.0.Any help.

Hopefully this gets fixed at some point... It's been this way since release and I cannot upgrade my project... Same error...